Earth League Symposium 2017

Earth League Symposium "Transformation now!"

The Earth League Symposium is hosted by John Schellnhuber (Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) and Johan Rockström (Chair of the Earth League and Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre).

Programme and registration

Pre-registration for the Earth League Symposium is now closed. Please contact us for enquiring about the possibility of late registration.

Description

Rapid transformation is urgently on the agenda: humankind is on the brink of melting the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, disrupting the resilience and diversity of the biosphere, affecting atmospheric and oceanic circulation and endangering the very planetary foundations upon which human progress has rested. Transitioning away from the combustion-based, increasingly outdated modes of operation of the 19th and 20th century to more advanced, sustainable practices in the 21st century now relies on vigorous self-amplification of transformative processes currently beginning in light of growing scientific understanding.

The success of the Paris climate agreement is by no means ensured; fulfilling its objectives requires ratcheting-up of ambitions through social, political and economic progress. It also requires debunking myths of allowable overshooting, climate engineering and no-regrets adaptation. On the contrary, renewable energies are a programme of potential empowerment of the poor, making decarbonization one of the great programmes for development in this century. The core dynamics of this programme lie in civilisatory progress in all of its forms: social, cultural, political and economic.

The challenge for science is twofold: to consider the biophysical Earth with its human worlds as one whole system, and to consider the opportunities and constraints in the dynamics of the social and technological systems that can save Earth from leaving the stable Holocene. This symposium will consider the post-Paris need to widening the view toward a handful of critical co-transformations that would allow pathways towards sustainable global development, and processes of their amplification toward tipping into the mainstream. Maintaining planetary boundaries is critical as much for reasons of environmental stability as it is for justice, but time is short. “Transformation now!” is clearly on the table for humankind as a centennial task.